Yesterday I was feeding my grandson breakfast, when the nectarine piece slipped from my hand. Normally, I would lick my fingers before trying to retrieve it, because it was all just too sticky. But in Ramadan, you cannot do that. For a moment I hesitated, which modality is correct? “After” the fast is not an immediate return to the pre-fast state of normal. This can be a good thing. Yesterday, I wrote on Twitter: “remember the best of what you did while fasting and try to keep that as part of your new state.”
The first day after Ramadan is full of celebration; and that’s not really normal either. So you can’t make an adjustment based on that. By this time: the-third-day-after, I would think we’d be some where closer to normal, albeit a new normal. A normal, renewed by the events of the fast, the epiphanies, the transformations, the growth and realizations, lessons learned or taken to heart.
I’m still not quite on any non-fasting schedule yet. Generally I do not need a clock (with or without the adhan) to get me started before sunrise. I can even afford to oversleep. I am almost surprised at how late I get started. Sunrise is almost 7 a.m. I can sleep til 6:30 and still make fajr prayer on time, technically. But that feels really late to me. So my day gets moving before the sun even begins to rise.
Last night I agreed to sleep with my grandson, rather than have him in my part of the house and not with his parents in the detached building behind the house. I already said, I don’t ever sleep more than three hours at a stretch. At least when he is with me, I feel like I am waking for a reason, and not just because I am a high-keyed person. He doesn’t take a bottle or even require a diaper change, with those extra-duty overnight diapers, but I guess he likes to check in that there are still people around, because it only takes a second before he returns to sleep if you catch him quickly enough and give him the pacifier. I couldn’t take the risk that he would further disrupt the fasting schedule, so he hadn’t slept with me for over a month.
Then, this morning, I had a conference call at 6 a.m. I got up at 5:30. That’s okay for me. But then a two-hour conference call at that hour is not normal either. Any way, all of this made me think about time and about schedules and routines. When Ramadan begins I usually put on my voice mail that our schedules have changed. This is my way of indicating that “you may get this voicemail because I will not give up certain crucial aspects of this schedule to accommodate your call, so leave a message.” That specificity seems mandated. But later, after the fasting dictates the schedule, what does a retired person use to mark off the hours of the day, and the days of the week? They all blend into each other.
About two weeks ago, I went for the follow up visit to my primary care provider and she told me everything was good with all my annual check ups except my A1c. I had no clue what that was, so she explained it was the hemoglobin count. As it turns out, I am in the (high) normal range and it is like an early warning system: if I get pro-active, I can avoid type-II diabetes (which is common in my family. In fact, I lost my eldest brother to it just last year).
When I got the news, during the fast, a number of my friends told me just go ahead and stop fasting to address it. But, I thought if I do not get on top of it, this may be my last Ramadan; and I just wanted to finish what I had started. I’m glad I did, but here’s the thing. To stabilize the blood sugar, pre-diabetics and diabetics have to eat smaller meals dispersed through out the day. I started it yesterday but found it was even harder than fasting. Maybe I need a new voicemail message to inspire me to prioritize the times of consumption.
I mean, the normalcy of the fasting schedule takes some time to get into, and now that I am supposed to be back to my normal, annual i.e. non fasting schedule, I am at a loss of what to do to make it work for this new restriction: the control of my blood sugar. So, I just kept thinking: what is normal; and, what is time; and, where are we in time; and, how do we determine what is the right time; and, what time is it when we ask, how to do it in a timely fashion; and, and, and; you get my drift.
I am feeling a bit adrift. I don’t think it is just the return from that fasting state/schedule to the “normal,” not fasting schedule. At least I hope it isn’t. I hope that given a period of adjustment, even this will become normal; a new normal yes, but less chaotic than it feels right now.
For one thing, I really did take this as a good thing, in the spirit of the early warning system. Since the time my friend said, you have to be invited by Allah to make the hajj; I have been in various states of preparation. I’ve been preparing to receive the invitation, preparing to recognize it when it is given, and preparing to accept it. I considered it a mandate to do whatever was necessary to put me in the right place for it all to happen. The rigors of the days-long rituals of hajj are physically demanding. It would be good to be in shape, just to keep up.
But not just physically better prepared, ritually as well. Before I left Indonesia, I worked to get a lot closer to the required five times daily prayers than was my own norm. I cannot function normally through out the day without that pre-sunrise fajr prayer, but honestly speaking none of the others have that same regularity. They are more touch-and-go inconsistent. Making this decision while still in Indonesia was a piece of cake. Everywhere you go there are accommodations. Every shopping mall, and if the mall is big enough, every floor of the mall; Every office building, every place you go for a meeting; every gate in the airport; even on a construction site, a place designated for salah and is inclusive of women and men. Everywhere.
I could make note of the time (or hear the adhan) and then make my way to the prayer place. They always have a wash station for ablutions. They always have prayer scarves for women, some women only wear one when they pray. Even when I was just visiting friends or in private homes if I said I want to make salah, they would show me to a place to wash and offer the rug and the scarf. No one else needed to stop to pray. No one was prevented from praying, or excluded from the activities, because they did so. I miss this seamlessness.
Here in the U.S. if I want to pray—just like if I want to eat to maintain an even blood sugar through out the day, I better carry my own provision. However, if I do carry these trying to keep up with the prayer stinks of being seen a fundamentalist, an extremist or a goody two shoes. To keep up with the five times daily prayer makes you stick out. Still, I consider the Islamic salah, a most perfect ritual. Now maybe I can make the time to describe how I came to this assessment.
I’ve been trying to get to this past week and then something distracts me in this every day, ordinary passing of time. That is a bit like what happens when you try to maintain the prayer itself, or to keep your blood sugar levels stable. You have to work extra hard for this normal so that other normal’s do not get in the way. I think keeping up with the fast in Ramadan was good practice. Because you have to work hard to keep that schedule too, but look at how many people did it. And then that too became normal.
I guess this too will pass and soon no conversation will be related to that state of normal and this one, this after the fast will be all we have.
